Conveyor systems are routinely used to handle and transport products between upstream and downstream destinations located in different and sometimes remote sections of a facility. In a normal operation of this type, products are placed on a conveyor at the upstream location, for instance at one operational station, and then they are transported to the downstream operation by conveyor where the next step in the manufacture or distribution of the products take place.
Often, the process includes upstream machines providing product which must be fed to downstream product receiving machines via different product delivery streams or paths. For example, a single upstream machine may output products by means of a single product path, but there may be a need to supply a downstream machine or machines with multiple product infeed delivery paths. Similarly, an upstream operation, e.g. two separate upstream product machines, may supply products by means of dual product delivery paths, wherein the downstream operation may require input by means of a single product path.
The above are cited only as examples. It can be appreciated that there are conveying systems with multiple different upstream to downstream product path delivery requirements, depending on the industry and need.
To date, no product path splitting and merging system has been developed which smoothly and efficiently divides upstream products into two or more outfeeds or combines products from multiple upstream sources to a single feed or to a different number of outfeed paths.
U.S. application Ser. No. 09/984,682, and now U.S. Pat. No. 6,575,287 relates to a product conveying and accumulation system with multiple conveyors, including product supply and discharge conveyors and an accumulator conveyor. The accumulator conveyor in this co-pending application efficiently and smoothly receives product for accumulation, should there be a disruption in the system, and for effectively delivering product to conveyors for distribution to downstream destinations, after the disruption is addressed. However, an important consideration not included in this application, and inadequately addressed by prior conveyor systems, concerns the need for such systems to have the ability to effectively split and/or merge product delivery paths, as the need arises.
The current invention is not an accumulator system, but employs some of the principles disclosed in application Ser. No. 09/984,682, to accomplish conveyor system product path line splitting and merging.
It is thus the object of the present invention to overcome the limitations and disadvantages of prior product path delivery conveyor systems.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a product conveying system which can receive a single product delivery path or multiple product delivery paths from an upstream destination and smoothly, efficiently and effectively output products to a downstream destination in a single delivery path or multiple delivery paths.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a product conveying system which employs the use of a continuous loop conveyor system to accept products from an upstream destination, traveling in one or more product delivery paths, and to distribute those products to a downstream destination in different product delivery path configurations.
These and other objects are accomplished by the present invention which consists of a continuous product conveyor system of loop configuration, designed to receive products from an upstream destination in a given product delivery path arrangement and to deliver those products to a downstream destination in a different product delivery path arrangement. The system is adapted, for example, to deliver a single file product path from an upstream destination and deliver multiple delivery paths downstream. The system also can be used to receive multiple product delivery paths from an upstream destination and deliver a single file product path or a different number of product paths downstream. The system can further be used for receiving mass product flow and delivering one or more product delivery paths downstream.